QUESTIONABLE DECISIONS

Fast Times at Tittybounce High: That Time I Streaked in High School

There’s a time and a place for nudity, and this wasn’t it

I wasn’t a wild one.

And really, there wasn’t much to see. My boobs were tiny. Nipples dime-sized, for lack of completely normal hormones.

Most importantly, the whole gallivant lasted maybe three seconds.

But I, an unbelievably nerdy and quiet high-schooler, once streaked.

To say I was an unlikely candidate for public nudity would be an understatement. Open my senior yearbook to page 32 and there I am, “Least Likely to Run Semi-Nakedly Down a Hallway With Two Other Swimmers After Morning Practice And After Our Coach Had Needed To Leave Early: Lindy Vogel.”

It happened, though.

Random acts of defiance — and especially impulsive ones— are common in teens. The adolescent brain’s unfinished development — not to mention my brewing bipolar disorder — may have been at play. Excuses, excuses.

But whether it was hypomania or just plain stupidity, I’m glad for the experience.

Why? We didn’t even get caught.

The pool area of our high school was mostly separate from the rest of the building but connected via a long, convoluted corridor. A shorter hallway separated the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms.

We’d finished morning practice and had just gotten out of the showers. My friend Beth heard someone pounding on the door that led to said-hallway. She didn’t want to answer it without somebody else present — lest a Jeffrey-Dahmer type be on the other side of that door, ready to drag a half-Speedoed 17-year-old to hell. We’d just been to a haunted house and perhaps these themes flashed fresh in her mind.

But the door-knocker wasn’t a cannibal; it was Damien.

I can’t for the life of me remember why I thought the “cool” and brutally-fapworthy Damien would be impressed by my boldness. For one thing, he looked like a Michelangelo muse, with his beautiful pecs and carved lower abs. I’d never had a boyfriend of any kind and was so relentlessly dorky that, the following academic year, I’d end up coming to school on senior skip day.

Damien was in a panic because he’d been showering and summarily pranked by his teammates. They shoved his naked ass out of the locker room and into the empty hallway, closing the heavy door behind him.

To be locked out of the locker room as a first-semester senior was indignity enough. But then, the fucking bell rang. PE classes would be swarming the area soon.

I didn’t get to see Damian’s junk; he was oh-so-disappointingly covering it with his hands as he stood in the girls’ doorway and pleaded for shelter.

“There are security cameras out here!” He laugh-shouted, magenta in the face.

My friend and I showed no mercy and dove into the naked fray.

I’ve never aspired to be a congresswoman or other elected official. My record is otherwise squeaky-clean. But because of these teenaged indiscretions that ship has probably sailed.

Beth dared me to take off my suit and run down the hall with her. Damien egged me on, still crouching over and covering his bits.

Fuck no.

“Come on, Bobby! I knew you wouldn’t.” He used our teammate’s Bobby-Boucher inspired nickname for me. Curled his lip into that cute, unintentional snarl and leveled his gray eyes at mine.

I was sure we were seconds from being caught by an adult and handed suspensions.

But Damien’s gaze made me a little bit crazy. I thought, fuck it. Pulled my suit halfway down, let ’em flap, and sprinted down to the other door with Damien and Beth no-breather-laughing alongside.

Nobody saw us — except for a few of our teammates who’d already seen it all anyway. Competition “paper” suits leave jack-squat to the imagination.

Beth and I cruelly abandoned Damien at the boys’ door, striding back to our locker room. One of the boys took pity and let Damien back in right away.

It was rumored that Damien was a bit of an exhibitionist. He’d been a figure model at a community college. Still, after this romp he probably never showered naked again — even in his own locked bathroom at home.

My friend Jon heard the sordid story and predicted that the security guy at our school was watching those tapes with rapt interest. But if that ever happened, I never heard about it.

And I can now confidently say that if I’m naked in public again soon, it will be at the nude spa.

Or in my own private shower at home. With the door locked.

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Note: This story was expelled from the bowels of my memory with the help of Au Naturel. Thanks for the peristalsis, Au!